Origin of “picnic”?

Question

What is the origin of picnic?

My research states that picnic comes from the French word Pique-nique and became common in the mid 18th century. It also states that the French word Pique-nique has an unknown origin making picnic have an unknown origin.

pic·nic

ˈpikˌnik

noun

noun: picnic; plural noun: picnics

1. an outing or occasion that involves taking a packed meal to be eaten outdoors. synonyms: outdoor meal, al fresco meal, cookout, barbecue

"a picnic on the beach"

a packed meal taken on an outing and eaten outdoors.

verb

verb: picnic; 3rd person present: picnics; past tense: picnicked; past participle: picnicked; gerund or present participle: picnicking

1. have or take part in a picnic.

Origin

mid 18th century: from French pique-nique, of unknown origin.

Answer 1

Etymonline traces its origin both as a noun and as a verb which actually confirm those in the comments:

Picnic (v.):

• "go on a picnic," 1842, from picnic (n.). Related: Picnicked; picnicking. The -k- is inserted to preserve the "k" sound of -c- before a suffix beginning in -i-, -y-, or -e- (compare traffic/trafficking, panic/panicky)

Picnic (n.):

• 1748 (in Chesterfield's "Letters"), but rare before c. 1800 as an English institution; originally a fashionable pot-luck social affair, not necessarily out of doors; from French piquenique (1690s), perhaps a reduplication of piquer "to pick, peck," from Old French (see pike (n.2) ), or the second element may be nique "worthless thing," from a Germanic source. Figurative sense of "something easy" is from 1886. Picnic table recorded from 1926, originally a folding table.

World Wide Word offers the two recent theories on its origin related to 'slavery' which actually are not supported by reliable evidence. Its French origin appear to be the more accepted one:

Picnic

• Picnic was a shortening of pick a nigger and referred to an outdoor community gathering during which families ate from box lunches while a randomly-chosen black man was hanged for the diners’ entertainment.

• The word was originally derived from the term pick-a-nig. Pick-a-nig was a gathering for slave traders and their families back in the 17th/18th centuries. They would get together after slave trading and have a big party, called pick-a-nig.

  • Though there’s no truth in these stories from an etymological viewpoint, it is very understandable how the first of these arose. Some of the historic photographs of lynchings show families with picnic baskets. This is evidence enough that a lynching was often a social occasion, but if you need further proof, you have only to investigate how often the phrase lynching bee turns up in contemporary descriptions of such events. However, there is no evidence at all for the second story.

• Picnic is originally a French word, picque-nique, which first appeared at the end of the seventeenth century. It later spread to Germany and other countries, but didn’t become widely known in English until after 1800. It referred to a fashionable type of social entertainment in which each person who attended brought a share of the food.

  • The first part may be from the French piquer, from which we get pick. The nique part may just have been a reiteration (as in English words like hoity-toity), but could have echoed an obsolete word meaning “a trifle” (so the term could have meant something like “each pick a bit”). The association with an outdoor meal didn’t appear in English until about the middle of the nineteenth century. So there’s no truth in stories that attempt to link the origins of the words with slavery.